Edison girls’ soccer wins tiebreaker match to punch CIF ticket
Before her Edison High girls’ soccer team faced a rival wearing black jerseys, coach Kerry Crooks shared a quote from the Black Mamba in her team’s group chat Friday.
“Everything negative — pressure, challenges — is all an opportunity for me to rise,” the late basketball legend Kobe Bryant said.
The Chargers were forced to play Huntington Beach for the second time in three days after the Oilers rallied to earn a win Wednesday night in a Surf League finale, creating a tie for second place in league.
“That was a very disheartening defeat on Wednesday, and to turn around and have to play again on Friday, they could have just showed up and mailed it in,” Crooks said. “Instead, they came and showed character, which is what sports is here for, right? They showed tremendous character.”
Edison indeed had an answer in the tiebreaker match at Fountain Valley High less than 48 hours later.
Senior Alex Wood converted a penalty kick goal late in the first half and it held up in a 1-0 Edison win, as the Chargers punched their ticket to an automatic berth in the CIF Southern Section Division 1 playoffs.
Huntington Beach takes the third-place designation in the four-team league, and will have to apply for an at-large berth into the Division 1 draw.
Wood, bound for Wake Forest, is scoring very consistently for the Chargers (14-8-2) this season. She has terrorized the Oilers (12-7-6), scoring in all three league matches against them.
After a defender tugged her down from behind in the 38th minute, she converted the penalty kick, giving Edison the lead.
“Before the game, we were talking about exposing them in the box, because their defenders like to come out really hard,” Wood said. “I thought we did a good job exposing the foul.”
Edison was missing senior midfielder and team captain Grace Ingalls (college trip) and senior defender Lucy Curren played through a stomach ailment, Crooks said. But the Chargers showed heart, making the goal stand up.
There were a couple of nervous moments in the second half, but Edison senior goalkeeper Allyssa Plotkin stood tall. Huntington Beach sophomore Jaiden Anderson played a free kick then a long throw-in, both from the right side, into the box in the final minutes.
But an equalizer didn’t materialize in the final minutes.
Edison, whose back line has been anchored all year by seniors Maddie Klasey and Kate Hass, sophomore Hailey Clingan and freshman Riley Crooks, earned its 11th shutout of the season.
“We were definitely trying not to let [Anderson] turn,” said Klasey of the Oilers’ talented sophomore, who had scored in two straight matches coming into Friday. “She’s very quick off her turns, so we didn’t want her to do that, and we didn’t want them to play as many balls over the top. We did our best to keep our line high, because she got called offsides a couple of times more than last game. We really worked on that, so that she wouldn’t have that space. And we headed out all of her very long throws, so that was better.”
Play suffered for Huntington Beach when senior midfielder Jacey Martinez was injured in the first half. Coach Raul Ruiz said after the match that it was a clavicle injury.
“They just took over the middle,” Ruiz said. “Once we lost her, we dropped off momentum, and it was hard to get it back. She’s a huge part of our midfield.”
Ruiz is optimistic that his Oilers will make the playoffs as an at-large team, but that could lead to a more difficult first-round matchup on the road.
Maybe they just need to look to Bryant for some inspiration. It worked for Edison.
“We do have a good shot,” Ruiz said. “We’ll be playing somebody, but sometimes you’d rather be playing at home in the first game of the playoffs. You don’t know who you might face, maybe a No. 1 seed or the No. 1 from the league where Upland plays [the Baseline League]. We always tend to draw them. It’s always tough to go on the road.”
The CIF Southern Section will release the girls’ soccer playoff brackets on Tuesday at 9 a.m.
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